Monday, September 17, 2012

Love Affair

In spite of the title, this post is not going to be a mushy paean to my relationship with Morgan.

It's going to be a mushy paean to my relationship with estate sales. I've always kind of been interested in them, and in fact I remember taking my kids to one a number of years ago. They were really interested, and then they realized that everything in the house was for sale because the occupant had died and were momentarily weirded out. They got over that, though, and each found something to buy. But I never really went to them with any regularity, partially because garage/yard/estate sale hours were a little too early for me most of the time.

Which reminds me - I'm going to go off on a slight tangent here for a minute, so bear with me. What time in the morning do yard sales start in your part of the world? All my life, I have been used to sales starting at 7 or 8 AM. Here in Denver, they often are listed as starting at 9 or 10. And if you go by there anywhere shortly after the start time, it's not that rare to see either nothing or someone who is just beginning to drag a couple of things out. Sometimes it feels like Mountain time bears more than a passing resemblance to "island time."

Anyhow, back to the point: the later hours here have meant that I have a thoroughly rekindled interest in yard sales and especially estate sales. Luckily, Morgan shares my enthusiasm, and it's become a regular event to go out to sales on the weekends. We've found all kinds of great things (and passed up some other great things, of course).

For example, we found our dining room chairs:

I didn't know we were looking for red chairs until we found them.

We have also found a lot of really great things for my collaging endeavors, along with maps for my drawing series. There is no place like an estate sale for ephemera and old books and magazines.

Total: $4.00

I have to remind myself that I only have a craft room, not an entire house to put these things in, and therefore I need to limit myself. But wow, what great stuff I find! Recently, we went to another sale where I picked up some coffee table books from the woman's travels to Russia and Poland in the 1980s. They weren't exactly popular tourist destinations at the time, so it makes me wonder how and why she went there.

Another find from this past weekend:

This will soon be full of bourbon.

They also had a bottle for sulfuric acid, which was tempting, but it was smaller and therefore not as practical for alcohol storage.

I was going to write more about our sale adventures, but it'll start getting really long so I'll quit here and come back to it later. The point really is that I love all kinds of weekend sales, but estate sales are my absolute favorite. And I'm really lucky that Morgan not only sees the appeal but also has similar tastes; we're both drawn to things that are old-fashioned. If we could manage it, I'm pretty sure our house would look like some kind of time warp hit it. We both want to actually use these things, too, not just display them. Next time, I'll talk about not only some of the things that came home with us, but some of the things that set our hearts aflutter but had to stay where they were.